Furniture - Move it or buy a new lot?

[alnmike]

We take a car full over each time we go. Once, using a cheap day return

offer, we took all chairs out of the car and really loaded it up. As

quick turnaround, only time for a bag of cakes and couple bottles of

wine. And this was the only time we were stopped by the authorities on

both sides of the channel, and a full car search! :)

[Albert the infopikey]

Thanks to everyone for lots of interesting comments, but what I get from all the answers is that it's more a personality thing than a practical one.

We'll almost certainly go the 'chuck it & start again' route because it fits our life style and because our new home will be totally different from the one our furniture was bought for.

That said, we'll do some more research on moving costs and furniture prices before we commit ourselves.

Whatever happens, we're a bit nearer our goal because we had an offer accepted on a terrain this weekend and in a few months we should own half an acre of France.

[Jo]

We had a "man with a van " recommended by the estate agent, who had moved to France himself and now does it as a business. I phoned them and they seem nice, genuine people and have quoted me approx £1800 - £2000 to move a standard 3 bed home. Am I allowed to give his name/details? Mind you, I haven't mentioned the piano yet!

[Catalpa]

Whereabouts are you and / or the "man with a van"?

[mint]

jo

i also would like this info. 

other thing is, does anyone know whether it's worth buying a brand new fridge to bring over?  i ask because the january sales are on and i have my eye on a big double-door american type fridge complete with ice-maker for about £500 and i am fairly sure i couldn't get a similar one for that price in france

your thoughts would be greatly appreciated as i am dithering somewhat over this

[Catalpa]

Um... now I want to know where your American-style fridge for £500 is  on offer - ours has just quietly handed in it's cards and I really cannot justify spending 1500+ euros over here for a new one. [:D] From that comment you will probably understand that if I were in the UK at the moment, that fridge would be on my trailer and heading for Portsmouth. There is obviously a downside to buying UK appliances for use in France - mainly from a maintenance / repair point of view - but I would take the risk.

[mint]

catalpa

there was one at £425 without ice-maker and one at £495 with ice-maker at comet or curry's or one of those.

i understand about the guarantee and also that it would probably be best to change the plug but, like you say, it's got to be worth a shot, n'est pas?

[Paul Bradford]

Hi Albert,

We moved from Southend in Essex to the Lot-et-Garonne in July of 2006. We used someone (found in the small ads in Living France) who sourced company's to carry out the removal. We paid them less than £40 for that, but only once we had agreed terms with a company. We received several quotes, some of whom were quite competitive. We paid less that £1700 for around 20 cubic metres. We were fortunate in that we had already begun to furnish our home in France and took delivery when it suited the company.

We threw mountains of stuff away. It's amazing the things that you accumulate! I made numerous trips to the local Civic Amenity site. I realised afterwards that I should have got a six metre skip. For around £100 that would have saved me lots of time. I used a local auction house for things that were too good to throw away, but still gave away furniture, tv's and tools. When the company telephoned us to arrange delivery, we had lived for six weeks without our possessions. We thought 'Where will we put them?' I lived in shorts up to the beginning of December, yet we transported four or five suits plus a similar amount of jackets and trousers and loads of pairs of shoes. My wife counted her jackets the other day. 28, not including coats for inclement weather! It's not that we don't want to dress nicely, we are now more casual as we live in a rural area and the opportunities to dress up are a lot less as well. We try to blend in a bit more with our neighbours. We should have been more ruthless. It is not too bad as we didn't pay too much for the removal. Some of the quotes were four or five times as much for the same service.

Good luck

Paul 

[hastobe]

We've found white goods in France to be really cheap - the 32" Phillips TV we bought at Christmas (against our better judgement - the kids wore us down!) was 750 euros in the sale at the Conforama in France. In the sale in Comet in the UK the same model was £850!!

The same model of fridge (Whirlpool American thingie) was also cheaper in Foxy in Perigueux (900 euro, so ~£600) than in Comet sale.  Having said that £500 does seem a pretty good price - but I guess it depends on what it costs to get it to France...

Kathie

[Jo]

[quote user="catalpa"]Whereabouts are you and / or the "man with a van"?

[/quote] We are currently in Nottingham and moving to 86, Man with a van is around that area, don't know for sure as I just have an e-mail address and phone number. He's coming over next month to shift a load from Lancashire and will be calling in to give me an estimate on a part load.

[Albert the InfoGipsy]

That must be a ruddy big 'van'! My uncle used to have a small removal firm and he operated a pantechnicon plus a smaller purpose-built luton.

I used to help him for pocket money. For a typical 3-4 bed house you could reckon on using both vehicles. Pantechnicons are probably bigger nowadays, so maybe the luton would not be needed, but when we did a move a few years ago we filled one to overflowing, even after a clearout.

[P]

This revived thread is of interest.

We were of the opinion that we should buy furniture in France. However, when we looked around the various stores, the items on display were certainly not to our taste - that was even before we saw the price tags[:-))]! In addition, we could not find the sort of fitted wardrobes that you can get in the UK.

We therefore decided that we would buy in the UK and take it over. The reasoning being that it would be to our taste and that th difference in price would pay for the transportation.

We now have a house that is packed with furniture. We did get some quotes for transporting it and these varied quite a bit. However, it was always in my mind to do it ourselves. We have hired a Luton van from a major company that is costing us £724 for two weeks hire and it is with the essential tail lift and includes breakdown cover (they have new vans and is only costing about £20 more than a local company who hires vans that are very elderly so no doubt the more modern engines will be more fuel efficient). The ferry costs are the same as a car. Having it for the two weeks means that w will be able to go and get things such as plasterboard, bath, ride on mower etc.

So if you do the sums you might find that it is a lot cheaper than having the furniture transported, you can unload at your pace and driving a van or a 7.5 tonner is not very difficult provided you take note of the increased dimensions.

Paul

[KathyC]

I'm amused that the title of this thread is "move it or buy new"; you seem to have done both. Congratulations!

[Russethouse]

Just a tip for anyone wanting to furnish a place in France (or anywhere) currently 'brown' furniture is cheap at auctions in the UK both good second hand and antique. Might be worth keeping an eye open for local sales.

[Evianers]

Or there is always eBay of course. Best recycling unit ever invented.

[Hoddy]

Or even Freecycle -

http://uk.freecycle.org/

Hoddy

[Jc]

28" TV in Asda last week was £100 and was PAL/SECAM/NTSC.

[Jc]

When we moved in the UK the first time,all our things packed into the bit over the cab;second time a whole pantechnicon and the third time,two pantecnichons were full;in France we took a few things down ourselves and bought the rest-mainly from BUT.

[Anton Redman]

" We've had estimates of £4-5,000 for moving all our stuff across to France "

I cannot get much above Euros 2000 for hiring a big van in France and Norfolk lines Dunkirk Dover into UK. If you are prepared to do the loading yourself. and stay only over night in UK. It was not the big articles of furniture but odd things like pressure washers and an upright Dyson that we regret abandoining for the sake of a second trip.

[Wilko]

Hi

Auchan in Cavaillon (84) US type fridges 750 euros in the sale.

Rgds Wilko

[londoneye]

If you need new white goods, or feel l ike you may need to replace them in the near future, then i would suggest you buy over here.    We purchased several new white goods/electrical from Argos before we came, on the basis that they were cheap, could come with us in removal lorry (hence no need to not have a fridge or whatever for a few days while we looked around for a good deal).     However after 6 months 3 items are no longer functioning; at least if we had bought in France we could have exchanged them via guarantee.   Also, there are some good sales on white goods at various times, so if you have some appliances that are on the way out, it may be worth bringing them anyway, until you see a replacement at a good price.

As for other stuff, i am not really a possessions person, so was quite happy to leave behind some stuff, although having to leave my plants behind upset me!    However, when you first come over your priority is unlikely to be hitting the shops, and so you do need to bring enough stuff to make your start here comfortable.    If you can I would then wait until you see what you like at a reasonable price, rather than going for the mega shop.

[sclarke2208]

Just an addition to the posts already here, being a sad old woman who is moving to France later this year I recently did a comparison on white goods using the web sites of major retailers in France. I used Darty, But, Conforama and CDdiscount stores to compare prices of things that I would prefer to buy in France. They were: cooker, washer and TV. My washer and tv are about 7 years old and out of guarantee and each house I have lived in recently has a built in cooker. CDdiscount came out tops for all items and I tried to use the same makes each time, and they were almost £200 cheaper for all three. A huge difference. I also then did a comparable listing using Argos and they were about 5% dearer than the French. Also you can get a loyality card at some of these stores in France which will then bring your price even lower. Plus the big advantage of having 2 years guarantee in France as opposed to 1 year in the UK.

Worth a look on the net[:D]

roseysan

[Evianers]

[quote user="sclarke2208"]

CDdiscount came out tops for all items

 

[/quote]

Could you please give a link on where to find these shops. I did Google but it came back with dozens of CD discount shops which are obviously not where one would buy white goods. TIA

[Alan Zoff]

http://www.cdiscount.com/home/default.asp?&navid=105

[Cassis]

Freazer

Kelkoo.fr

Acheter-moins-cher

http://www.cdiscount.com

http://www.discounteo.com/

http://www.etrouvetout.com

http://www.maismoinscher.com/

http://www.mistergooddeal.com

http://www.webachatfrance.fr/

The first two are comparison sites, the others are reasonable online sites for white goods among other things.  If any opens up onto tumble driers that's because that's what I was looking for last.  This is by no means exhaustive!